[LINK] "We’ve forgotten why we celebrate Halloween: to acknowledge death"

[rfmcdonald]

I quite like Daniel Richler's essay in The Globe and Mail talking about how Halloween is fundamentally a frightful holiday.

For 50 years now, I have been offended by children dressing up at Halloween as sugar-plum fairies, ballerinas, cutesy Pokemon and the like, but no one's ever taken my rantings seriously and now look: society's knickers are in a knot, quite unnecessarily, over yet another fun and healthy tradition.

I was brought up with a respectful understanding of other peoples' cultures and religions. I was taught the true meaning of this festival before it was appropriated by Cadbury, Wal-Mart, timid parents, identity-politics watchdogs and snowflakes across the land. And so, though I'm not a pagan (a closet goth, perhaps), I feel compelled, once again, to deliver my lecture.

The trouble began, I believe, with the dropping of the apostrophe. As with other attempts to address cultural clashes by exorcizing the lexicon, the Americanized "Halloween" has lost sight of both "Hallows" and "evening." As we fret over whether kids should be allowed to wear sombreros, we forget that this was the night when a portal was briefly opened onto the dark side; when we welcomed the souls of the dead into our homes; when troubled, mischievous and evil spirits were let off the leash, not unlike letting your children tear about the garden to release some steam before bedtime. Think The Purge, for revenants.